What Else Is Important?

When thinking about performance management, always keep in mind this basic mantra: "Set expectations, hold them accountable, provide them feedback, and react to the results." Regardless of what tools, frameworks, or metrics you use, it boils down to those four things. But other, second-order considerations come into play based on those four things—career growth, motivation, and relationships—and we'll talk about them in this course as well.

Career growth#

As you gain time with your team (and they with you), you'll be more and more responsible for their growth and development. Obviously, your team members will need to "do the work" to earn the promotions and develop the skills that will help them ascend in their career, but yours will be the hand on the tiller, so to speak, leading them into projects and opportunities to provide or demonstrate that growth. Growing the people on your team is your responsibility, and one metric you should be holding for yourself is the growth of the people reporting to you. How many of them have received promotions? How many of them reached a point where you "had to" promote them up and out of your team? In sports leagues, this is often referred to as a "coaching tree": the assistants of some coaches go on to become full-fledged coaches themselves. You should be trying to grow your coaching tree as you grow as a manager.

Motivation#

Motivating your team matters a great deal in affecting what their performance is going to look like. Motivated employees stand a far better chance of meeting your expectations and, in most cases, will be far better inclined to take the guidance you offer with the grace necessary to act upon it. (Demotivated employees typically don't take coaching or guidance well, for a whole host of reasons I imagine I don't need to explain—most of us have been there before.) However, don't mistake "performance" for "motivation." Not all high performers are motivated in the way you'd prefer, and not all poor performers are poorly motivated. Finding each employee's motivation is a huge part of helping them perform at their best, but it isn't a guarantee. However, not tapping into your employees' motivations will almost inevitably in time lead to poor performance, which will be your performance, in turn.

Relationships#

Given that most (if not all) of your job is about people and the interaction of people, much of management is about relationships. In this course, we'll focus on how relationships can affect the performance of the team. Keep in mind, however, that this is only one angle by which you manage relationships. This isn't the only way in which relationships "matter," and we'll have much more to say about relationships in other courses.

As you progress through this course, remember that these are humans we're dealing with, and humans are entirely nondeterministic entities. What works well for one person might not work for another, and what works well for somebody one year might have less or even no effect the following year. We'll discuss what parts of performance management are negotiable and flexible—allowing you room to pivot and shift to meet your employees' unique needs or desires–-and what parts aren't. Remember, when in doubt, loop your HR allies into the conversation earlier rather than later.